Multi-platinum selling artist REX BROWN (ex Pantera, Down) has debuted an all new single and music video for the track “Train Song”. This is the second single behind “Crossing Lines” that was released back in April. Directed by Justin Reich (Zakk Wylde, Ace Frehley), this is the first music video being released from Brown’s debut solo effort.

“It was a frickin’ blast working on this with Justin,” says Brown. “I always hated the sitting around and waiting mentality, but Justin and his crew made it incredibly easy and very productive! This first video shows a ton of power and Justin captured it all with no hesitation.”

The video was shot in Nashville, TN where the record itself was recorded and produced. Rex’s bandmates are also making their debut in the video. Lance Harvill, who also co-wrote most of the LP with Brown plays lead guitar. Joe Shadid plays rhythm guitar and longtime friend of Brown’s and Type O Negative member Johnny Kelly plays drums. Caleb Sherman can be seen on Keys and lap steel as well.

Check out the video here:

The first ever REX BROWN solo album ​”Smoke on this…” will be released on July 28th, 2017, via Steamhammer / SPV.

Multi-platinum selling artist Rex Brown is releasing an all new single titled “Crossing Lines”. The song is taken from his forthcoming, first ever, solo album. Rex Brown will release the album Smoke On This… on July 28th, 2017 via Steamhammer / SPV within Europe.

Watch the lyric video here:

My motto these days is ‘Shake some shit up,’” Brown declares about the new LP. “I’ve had my ups and downs, like anybody in this business. I wanted to feel like a true artist again, where I can write and record songs without worrying about any of the bullshit.”

“Crossing Lines” is also available on all streaming platforms and download portals. The artwork and album track listing are available below as well for the first time.

Brown continues, “We’re not going to necessarily cater to metal fans, but the guys who grew up with Pantera, a lot of them love all the same stuff that I grew up on, too. This is just something else I’m doing for fun, man. And musical Freedom. Fun has to come into it or I’m not going to do it. I’ve had a tremendous career and now I feel like I’m thirty years old again. This has given me that freedom I needed.”

“I’ve got so much more in me,” Brown enthuses.“I’m just getting my feet wet.”

Tracklisting “Smoke On This…”
The album will be available as a CD, Ltd. Edition Vinyl Version and Download

1. Lone Rider
2. Crossing Lines
3. Buried Alive
4. Train Song
5. Get Yourself Alright
6. Fault Line
7. What Comes Around…
8. Grace
9. So Into You
10. Best Of Me
11. One Of these Days

Brown’s solo debut strips away any boundaries and preconceived notions, reveling in a newfound freedom to express all of the various shades of the man whose name is out front. The song “Fault Line” helped him find his voice. “That was the very first one I sang. After I got that one, I knew that I could do it, and Lance was my biggest motivator in finding that voice. Up until that point I just wasn’t sure.”

From there, there’s the brilliantly straightforward “Lone Rider,” the monstrous In Through the Out Door vibe of “Crossing Lines,” the Pink Floyd reverence of “Best of Me.” “Get Yourself Alive” is something of an ode to “Strawberry Fields Forever,” but with a swift-kick of rock n’ roll. It’s rich in nuance, with Indian tandoori and layers of vocals. The extremely catchy “Grace” is “something you would never expect to hear off a Rex Brown record and that’s exactly why I did it. It’s just a really great song, period. Bottom line.”

Lyrically, the songs are both personal and universally relatable. “Buried Alive” is a deeply moving and confessional song about the loss of Dimebag Darrell. “I drowned myself in cases of whiskey after he died. I was drowning in that black water and I had to find me, ya’ know? It’s one of those songs that really kind of just came out. ‘You’re on your own now, Jack. What’re you gonna do?’ The whole record is really cathartic.” Conversely, “What Comes Around Goes Around” could be about “your mailman, your neighbor, or your wife. It’s saying, ‘you made your bed, lay in it. I’m clean on my side of the street, how’s your’s going.”

Rex’s solo album is full of mojo and the force of character, determination, and nerve. He tracked lead vocals, rhythm guitars, and bass, working with his primary collaborator and old friend, Lance Harvill, a Nashville-based guitarist and songwriter, on the album’s songs. “Lance was & is, my main man on this. Everything we did was finely tuned, both musically & brotherly.”

Drums were tracked by Christopher Williams, himself no stranger to diverse tastes, from funk music to punk. His talent has been utilized by country music star Lee Greenwood, the reconstituted Blackfoot and most recently, power metal legends Accept. The album was produced by New Yorker turned Nashville transplant Caleb Sherman, a multi-instrumentalist with work on records by Little Big Town and Porter Block, among others. “Caleb produced the project from a musician’s standpoint,” adds Brown. “Not just a typical producer’s standpoint, which was something I definitely needed. Between Caleb and Lance, we were a force to be reckoned with. They really pulled out the best in me.” Peter Keyes, known for his work with Lynyrd Skynyrd can also be heard on a few tracks. All bass tracking came from Rex himself as well.

Who is Rex Brown? To the industry, fellow musicians, and a legion of fans around the world, he’s the bassist for Pantera, one of the biggest hard rock and metal acts of the past few decades, alongside Nirvana and Metallica. They had Number One albums with minimal support from traditional commercial outlets and went platinum several times over. Pantera rode a groundswell of underground loyalty, earned through several years of blood, sweat, and road beers. Five major label albums, countless international tours, and a series of carnage-filled home videos cemented a legacy as large as their massive riffs and the band’s insatiable appetites for mayhem, authenticity, and brotherhood.

Multi-platinum selling artist Rex Brown (PANTERA, DOWN) is due to release his first solo album via SPV / Steamhammer within Europe.

“I’ve been working on these songs for a long time,” says Brown. The yet to be titled full length will be the first time in Brown’s career in which he will serve as both, lead vocalist and guitarist in a band. The release is planed for June 23rd, 2017.

Georg Schröder (A+R Steamhammer) on the signing: “We are honored and proud to release the first Rex Brown solo album within Europe. The album shows a side of him, that many people won’t expect but it is well worth to check it out and i’m really looking forward to get this one out there.”

After a season away to gather his wits about him, rediscover his own roots, and assemble a group of players ready to help him execute his vision for the days ahead, Rex Brown reemerges with a semi truck’s worth of rock n’ roll tunes as honest and sincere as they come. The new album is the sound of the man’s own truth, forthright and ego-free. As he likes to say, “You’re only as good as your word and your word better be good.”

Rex’s solo album is full of mojo and the force of character, determination, and nerve. He tracked lead vocals, rhythm guitars, and bass, working with his primary collaborator and old friend, Lance Harvill, a Nashville-based guitarist and songwriter, on the album’s songs. “Lance was & is, my main man on this. Everything we did was finely tuned, both musically & brotherly.”

Drums were tracked by Christopher Williams, himself no stranger to diverse tastes, from funk music to punk. His talent has been utilized by country music star Lee Greenwood, the reconstituted Blackfoot and most recently, power metal legends Accept. The album was produced by New Yorker turned Nashville transplant Caleb Sherman, a multi-instrumentalist with work on records by Little Big Town and Porter Block, among others. “Caleb produced the project from a musician’s standpoint,” adds Brown. “Not just a typical producer’s standpoint, which was something I definitely needed. Between Caleb and Lance, we were a force to be reckoned with. They really pulled out the best in me.”Peter Keyes, known for his work with Lynyrd Skynyrd can also be heard on a few tracks. All bass tracking came from Rex himself as well.

American bass player Rex Brown is well known as the longstanding bass guitarist for PANTERA, recording the legendary albums such as “Cowboys From Hell” and “Far Beyond Driven”, along with the much missed guitarist Dimebag Darrell.

In more recent years, Rex worked again with vocalist Phil Anselmo as part of DOWN. Rex is currently part of L.A. supergroup KILL DEVIL HILL, along with Dewey Bragg, Mark Zavon and new drummer Johnny Kelly (replacing Vinny Appice). The band released their self-titled debut album two years ago.

Earlier in the day on the River Thames in London, Rex played a short set on the HMS Hammer boat. Later in the evening of Monday 16th June, Rex presented the ‘Dimebag Darrell Shredder‘ award to PERIPHERY‘s Misha Mansoor, at the Metal Hammer Golden Gods 2014. For the interview with Misha, check this location.

Rex expressed: “It’s kinda cool that I got to do it, kind of a touching thing, very very fucking cool to honour my fallen brother.”

Eric Spitznagel of MTV Hive recently conducted an interview with former PANTERA and current KILL DEVIL HILL bassist Rex Brown. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

MTV Hive: Why write a memoir now?

Rex: Is there ever a good time to do it? Really? I’d been thinking about it for awhile, and I was always like, “No, I don’t want to talk about this shit.” It took me awhile to really get my shit together. I wanted to keep the memory of [late PANTERA guitarist] Dime [“Dimebag” Darrell Abbott] alive. But this is not about Dime, this is more about me. This is my truth, how I saw it, and I had really good seats for the fucking thing.

MTV Hive: Is it possible you wrote the book because you needed the money? I read something in USA Today last year that you owe $449,567 in back taxes.

Rex: Wrong!

MTV Hive: That’s not true?

Rex: That’s all bullshit. Dude, I didn’t write a book for the money. I think we all owe a little bit in back taxes, but that’s just bad management skills. You’re the first one to ask me that. I’ve done 40 or 50 interviews for this book and nobody’s asked about taxes.

MTV Hive: Maybe they forgot to Google you.

Rex: You know why I think it is? I think kids start blogs and they write what they want and people actually believe it. Which I don’t subscribe to. I don’t read the blogs. I could care less, man. This is my truth.

MTV Hive: Is a PANTERA reunion ever going to happen?

Rex: [Long pause] I’ll put it this way. I never say never to at least grasping the opportunity to be brother to brother. Phil [Anselmo, vocals] and I have that. And Vinnie [Paul, drums] just hasn’t gotten on with the picture. It’d be great for us to sit in a room and figure out if we ever want to do that again. But I don’t really think there’ll ever be another PANTERA without Dime in it. So, it’s a very complicated story. At the same time, it’d be nice to maybe play a couple shows and have a bunch of guest stars. But as far as reunion, there’s no reunion, man. Dime‘s dead.

MTV Hive: It must’ve been difficult writing about Dime‘s death.

Rex: It was, man.

MTV Hive: Was there at least some comfort in knowing that he left doing something he loved? As gruesome and terrible as his death was, his last memory was wailing on his guitar.

Rex: Yeah, that’s one of the things I cling to. It’s just the timing that was completely fucked. The guy who killed him, he didn’t just want Dime, he wanted the whole fucking band. He was that delusional. I had it from police reports, which I don’t carry around with me but they’re in my office at home, this guy thought he wrote all of our songs. He was really out of his fucking mind.

Metal Mark of SkullsNBones.com recently conducted an interview with former PANTERA and DOWN and current KILL DEVIL HILL bassist Rex Brown about Rex‘s memoir, “Official Truth, 101 Proof: The Inside Story Of Pantera”. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

SkullsNBones.com: For starters, you were always considered the “quiet” member of PANTERA, and you really hold nothing back in the new book. Was it challenging or weird for you to let people in more than you ever have before?

Rex: It was more cathartic for me than anything else. It was a lot harder than I expected, but I think it turned out great. Writing a book ain’t easy, man. [laughs] Trying to get all those words in, all the stories in, and everything else in 320 pages was really difficult. It could have been over 900 pages, but we made sure it wasn’t, ya know. As for it being weird, I would never say it was weird, because I had a story to tell, and it’s finally coming out for everyone next week.

SkullsNBones.com: For me as a PANTERA fan, reading about where you were the moment you heard about [the death of PANTERA guitarist “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott] and the days after, it was tough to get through. How hard was it for you to go back to those memories and sort of relive them for this book?

Rex: Bro, the word cathartic just keeps coming up for me. Having to rewrite this thing so many times, it was good, but at times it was really sad. I really wanted to put my experience out there, because I’ve heard so many others, so now people know my experience with hearing the news as well. It’s still devastating to think about, but I think we all feel that way. It was definitely tough, though, man; I won’t lie.

SkullsNBones.com: As you mention Dime, the parts in the book about all of you growing up together is really an awesome read. From the classrooms to the jam sessions, it’s really cool to learn. Of course, no one could have imagined how huge PANTERA would become, but it seemed right from the beginning that you knew that this was going to be something good.

Rex: Yes and no. We were four completely different individuals, even in the beginning, but we had that drive to be the best we possibly could. We just went through a crazy ride that took us to the top and it was unreal at times. It wasn’t always good and fun, but in the end, you mention PANTERA and the amount of respect that name brings is something I’m sure we are all super proud of still to this day.

SkullsNBones.com: As you know, with every musician’s book, there will be those people who say it’s only your side of things and it may not be completely accurate. How do you respond to those who say that?

Rex: It’s all true, man. I didn’t fabricate anything. I threw in entertaining stories, to keep the reader involved, but it’s all true. Everyone that has read it can clearly feel the honesty, and that was important to me. The bottom line was if I was happy with it, and I am, so people can respond how they choose. I’m very proud of this book. This is just my story, man. I didn’t write it for money or to piss people off; it’s just me telling the story from my eyes, because I lived it. There were only four of us who knew what went on, and this is my story. I can’t stress that enough.

SkullsNBones.com: Throughout all the bad things that may have happened during those years, it does not take away that you four guys lived a dream that only a few people can say they have. Do you have any regrets looking back on those years?

Rex: I totally agree, man. We were very fucking lucky, we were very fucking determined, and I have absolutely no regrets. The only regret is what happened to Dime, but I had no control over that. It’s a shame that some fucking deranged idiot decided to do that to someone so special in this world. It’s a bigger shame that we will never know what might have happened. As I said in the book, if Dime was alive, I believe we would still be jamming together. To put it plain and simple, I have no fucking regrets. You can always look back and say we could have done things differently, but that’s life in general. You live and you learn, ya know.